PIBROCH
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The MacCrimmon legend
Clan chiefs from all over the Highland and islands allegedly sent their best pipers to the MacCrimmons who, the legend has it, ran a famous piping college at Borreraig on Skye for 300 unbroken years.
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Angus MacKay
The most damaging quote about his 1838 book came from Sandy Cameron, the famous piper, whose father had been taught by Angus MacKay's father himself. Sandy quietly said: "Angus had a style all of his own."
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Pibroch
Pibroch is the opera of the bagpipe, singing to us in a single voice of the Celtic people. Of their loves and hate, their joys and sorrows, their grief at death and their sweet delight at birth, of all the emotions that bind a people, for it always was the music of the people.
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Pibroch Styles
Pibroch came down to us in two distinct schools or styles of playing, called the Cameron and the MacPherson styles, or schools.
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The Old Masters
"...the pibrochs handed down by these dedicated musicians differed entirely from the guff which was being foisted on pipers. And no-one knew where the distortions came from."
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The Piobaireachd Society
"Highland aristocracy flocked to join... What must be stressed is that the members were sincere about supporting pibroch, and had little or no idea of what was being done in their names."
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Sausage Fingers and Bones
These were the derisive nicknames of the two despotic lairds who falsified the music. Both were so self-inflated they somehow asserted they were greater authorities on pibroch than the master pipers who "taught" them.
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John Macdonald, the accomplice
He wrote a series of damning letters blaming Arch. Campbell for altering the music but inadvertently disclosed he had taught his pupils differently from the way he himself taught.
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